July is not usually a newsworthy month in college basketball but this year it signifies the start of the D-1 transition process for several schools: Lindenwood, Queens, Southern Indiana, Stonehill, and Texas A&M-Commerce. Jaret von Rosenberg is the current head coach at Texas A&M-Commerce and has never had a losing record in his 5 years in charge. His predecessor Sam Walker set the bar pretty high so we shall see if the Lions can retain their winning ways after making the leap from D-2. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Sam about his old job and his current job.
You went to college at Sam Houston where you were a student assistant: could you tell even back then that you wanted to become a coach? Yes. I actually started as a student assistant at Navarro College for Lewis Orr.
You were hired as head coach at Texas A&M-Commerce in 2000: why did you take the job? After graduating from Sam Houston I became a grad assistant at East Texas State, then an assistant coach, and eventually inherited the job after working for Coach Paul Peak. I started from humble beginnings: I lived in the locker room for 11 months and had no bills!
In 2012 you were the only program in the nation to have multiple guys be named Academic All-Americans (Andrew Davis/Desmond King): how much importance did you place on academics? I do not know that we placed an importance on academics: we cared mostly about character development. It is the only time in school history that we had 2 of them, and considering that basketball only has 5 starters (which is low compared to other sports) it is pretty amazing. A lot of that is about recruiting: it is not like I was in charge of study hall or anything! Kudos to them for being really good players and 4.0 students.
You were a part of the 1st 6 NCAA D-2 tourney appearances in school history (3 as head coach and 3 as assistant coach): what is the key to winning games in March? Since I stepped down my former assistant Jaret von Rosenberg has been to a couple of tourneys as well. Paul always told me to not try to win early but rather to try to win late. You want to win every game you play but it is such an intriguing sport: it is the only NCAA sport that is played for 6 straight months. It is such a marathon that if you look at the good teams like Kansas you see that they may take some lumps early but are good late. Our record was always really good during January/February as we tried to get on a roll and prepare for a good run in the conference tourney. We have played basketball for 104 years here and our group is the only 1 that has won an outright conference title and conference tourney title.
You spent 17 years as head coach before being named Executive Director of Alumni Engagement, where you support the formation of new alumni chapters and help recruit new students: how do you like the job, and what do you hope to do in the future? It is so fun. I have been at the university for 31 years so when you get to turn your attention to alums/athletics/fundraising it is a whirlwind…but also very relaxing compared to the grind of college coaching.
You remain the winningest coach in school history: do you think that anyone will ever break your record? I do not know. I am actually the winningest coach in any sport in school history…but I might also be the losingest coach! I am kind of the Emmitt Smith of Commerce due to my longevity. Our current men’s and women’s coaches were both longtime assistants of mine so if they break my record it would be great: I live vicariously through them.
You have quite a coaching tree as more than a dozen of your former players/assistants became college basketball coaches: what is the secret to being a good mentor? If you interviewed all of them and asked them what I said when I hired them, it would be that their job was to give us all they had and it was my job to help them find their next job. Not everyone wants to be a lifer but we stayed pretty loyal to all of them. We had a mission to prepare our players for what lay ahead after they left college.
1 of those former assistants is Jaret von Rosenberg: how do you think he is going to do as the 1st D-1 coach in school history? I think that he will do really well. There are a lot of different layers to the onion so he might have to take his lumps early against Power-5 schools but he has a great mentality/work ethic and I think he is the right guy for the job.
The Lions were pretty competitive last year in exhibition play with a 3-PT win at UTSA and a 3-PT loss at South Alabama: did that give you some confidence that the squad can come right in and compete at the D-1 level? The Southland is a winnable conference: during my 26 years as coach here I never felt that we were not competitive. With the D-2 transfer rules we were able to get kids that other schools could not get. I do not have the schedule in front of me but I think that we play some non-conference teams like SMU/Wyoming. I will be shocked if we are not competitive in conference play. We are close to the Metroplex and I think that making the jump is not as big a deal as some people think. I think we will be successful in all of our sports: it will not be a long transition.
This month your school officially became a member of the Southland Conference as it made the jump from D-2 to D-1: could you have ever imagined this would happen during your tenure as head coach, and how is it going so far? Our president Mark Rudin has a passion for athletics and wants us to be successful: that really helps. He was the brainpower behind our move to D-1. We will not throw money at it but will make sure that our student-athletes have everything they need to be successful. I have been pressing for it for about a decade. Around 2012/2013 I felt that our university started growing and even started to outgrow the Lone Star Conference. We have kept getting stronger and I think this is the perfect time to make the move. We have built the infrastructure and have planned out what it takes to be a D-1 program. We dipped our toe in the water because it was pretty well thought out. A lot of times it can be a shock after switching levels but we have prepared ourselves for this move.